Question

I have an ASP.NET MVC solution and also a WCF service for data access. In my WebUI I have some enums like this:

public enum CompanyColumsEnumViewModel
{
    CompanyName,
    CompanyPostCode,
    CompanyCity
}

This enum allows me to perform a search based on specific columns. For example: searching for ‘2000’ in the CompanyPostCode field.

When a user submit a search formular, I call my service and I pass several parameters like this:

var companies = _requestServiceClient.GetCompanies(term, column);

Where term = ‘2000’ and column = ‘CompanyPostCode’

My question is what is the best:

• pass column as en enumeration in the web service? (1)

• pass column as simple string in my web service? (2)

  (1) IEnumerable< Company> GetCompanies(string term, CompanyColumsEnumViewModel column)

  (2) IEnumerable< Company> GetCompanies(string term, string column)

If I work with enumerations I have to declare these enumerations on both side: one in my WebUI and one in my web service?

Thanks.

Answer 1

If your enum is part of your ServiceContract (as in it exists as a parameter) then you need to attribute it up as a DataContract:

[DataContract]
public enum CompanyColumsEnumViewModel
{
    [EnumMember]
    CompanyName,

    [EnumMember]
    CompanyPostCode,

    [EnumMember]
    CompanyCity
}

Then, you can discover this in a service reference on the client side. This, I think, would be prefered to a string column.